In space, no one can hear the cash register ring

Well it was bound to happen. Once that bloke in the US managed to get the first civil spaceship to leave the earth’s atmosphere, you just knew it wouldn’t be long before someone would set out to make a quick buck. Take a bow, Sir Richard Branson.

Seems he has teamed up with Burt Rutan, creator of SpaceShipOne to build five Virgin Galactica Spaceships, the idea being to bring space travel within reach of the masses. Given that each of the five seats available will cost £100,000 each, this is clearly a new definition of the term.

And “space travel” is a bit of a misnomer. What you will actually get is a week of preparation and then a three-hour flight which is to space travel what a trip round the lighthouse is to round the world sailing.

Still, if you’ve got it, there can’t be many less pretentious ways to flaunt it.

Nobody’s prefect. If you find any spelling mistakes or other errors in this post, please let me know by highlighting the text and pressing Ctrl+Enter.